filial duty

                 After reading both articles I tend to favor the view of Jane English, but I still think that there are several problems with her view. At one point in the article she mentions that if a child feels no love or friendship toward the parent then they have no obligation to help them and while there are some cases of abuse or neglect where I would agree with this, it seems like most children would have some obligation to at least try to help their parents. Li brings up this point and later addresses Jane's example of neighbor mowing the lawn while you're away to somewhat refute this point. I agree with Li when she says that a favor shouldn't necessarily have to be requested as repayment for something and can instead just be implied. If a parent tried to raise the child to the best of their abilities and gave them what they reasonably could, I think that the child would have some moral duty to try to help them out when they're older. However, I do think that Li takes this a bit too far in insisting that you have to not only try to take care of your parents,but that you have to do it well and sacrifice everything that you have if necessary. I would argue for a more moderate approach that more relies on the parents performance. If a parent did sacrifice everything for you and deprived themselves to get you what you wanted then you would be more obligated to help them than the parent who occasionally helped you out and put themselves first. This argument is mostly for the children that don't feel any love or affection toward their parent since otherwise they would probably happily help them as much as they could on their own without having to rely on a sense of duty. This goes more towards English's friendship argument and ideally this would be the case, but if there is no friendship or love there should be some sense of moral duty to the parent so that they aren't completely abandoned when they are old and possibly helpless.  So overall I would argue a combination of the two ideas where you do have some degree of obligation towards your parents, but not to the point of having to sacrifice everything for them.